Ireland and the EU migration pact

Sir, – Our Government seems keen to rush through our signing up to the proposed EU migration pact on the grounds that it will help solve our current international protection difficulties (“Irish plan for implementing EU migration pact, including new accommodation centres, expected by November”, News, June 14th). However, it is remarkably coy on producing any statistics to back up their assertion. Currently, the only timely statistic produced in the entire asylum area is the International Protection Accommodation Service (Ipas) weekly report on new arrivals (and even that was delayed for two weeks prior to voting on June 7th) while backlogs at International Protection Office, the International Protection Appeals Tribunal and the repatriation area of the Irish Immigration Service remain shrouded in mystery.

Political opponents of the pact make great play of the loss of sovereignty (a red herring as long lost through opting into previous EU legislation) and the fact that Denmark has opted out. This ignores the key fact that the Danes have sensibly never opted into any EU asylum processing legislation since 1992 and (luckily for them) have a legal process that does not allow for judicial review of failed asylum claims (a key cause of delays here).

I await the level of debate with interest given the entire body politic seems ill-equipped with actual facts. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL FLYNN,